Ina Garten Shares Her Memorial Day Menu (Plus Her Tips for Grilling a Perfect Steak)

Memorial Day weekend is days away. You may know you’ll be celebrating (ideally outdoors with a cold cocktail), but what will you cook for the occasion? We have plenty of ideas for appetizers, mains, sides and desserts to choose from, but we wouldn’t blame you for stealing Ina Garten’s holiday menu and calling it a day. The Queen of Chambray has made it easy for us by sharing a week’s worth of Memorial Day recipes to her Instagram.

“In honor of Memorial Day, I’m doing a week of classic American dishes, starting with my take on an old-fashioned ‘wedge salad,’ - crunchy iceberg salad with creamy blue cheese dressing,” writes Garten in an Instagram caption. “It’s SO good that you’ll want to make it all the time!”

On day two, she shared her recipe for grilled New York strip steaks with a dry rub of coffee, chipotle powder and garlic. “The real secret is in the exact method of grilling, so they come out perfectly every time!!” writes Garten. Instead of sharing a photo of the dish, she shared a video from 2020 explaining how she learned to grill steak from Mark Lobel of Lobel’s of New York, a butchery that’s famous for its dry-aged meat.

The trick is heating only half the grill with hot coals and leaving the other half empty and cool. Ina sears the steaks on the hot half for 2 minutes exactly per side (“It’s a great time to pour a glass of wine,” suggests the cheeky Contessa), then finishes them on the cool side with the grill top down for 8 minutes for a rare steak and 10 minutes for medium.

On day three, she shared her recipe for crusty baked potatoes with whipped feta. “The skin comes out crusty with rosemary, lemon and salt and the creamy feta on top is out of this world!” she asserts. With a flourish of chopped chives and a massive dollop of cheese on top, we’re betting we wouldn’t miss the sour cream.

The most recent recipe in her Memorial Day series is dessert, a warm strawberry rhubarb crisp. Personally, we feel that’s an ingenious move, given that rhubarb season is almost over. “Mine has a little orange zest to bring out all the fresh fruit flavors,” Garten writes. “I serve it with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream. As the late, great Tina Turner might say, it’s simply the best!”

We’re keeping our eyes peeled for the rest of her holiday menu. Fingers crossed another super-sized cocktail makes the cut.

_{Taryn Pire is PureWow’s associate food editor. A former bartender and barista, she’s been writing about all things delicious since 2016, developing recipes, reviewing restaurants and investigating food trends at Food52, New Jersey Family Magazine and Taste Talks. When she isn’t testing TikTok’s latest viral recipe, she’s having popcorn for dinner and posting about it on Instagram @cookingwithpire.}